Beef, Dog, and Other Mythologies: Connotative Semiotics in Mahāyoga Tantra Ritual and Scripture1

Abstract

Scholars have long debated how the antinomian elements in the Buddhist Tantras are to be interpreted. Some maintain that they are to be taken literally; others that they are figurative or "symbolic." Both, however—in approaching these statements as examples of directly denotative natural language—miss the most essential aspect of the semiology of these traditions. This paper demonstrates that the Buddhist Mahāyoga Tantras employ a form of signification (theorized by Roland Barthes) called "connotative semiotics," in which signs (a signifier–signified union) from natural language function as signifiers in a higher-order discourse. Employing these semiological tools enables criticism to recognize that what is fundamentally operative—in both ritual performance and scriptural narrative—is a grammar of purity and pollution in significant dialog with both earlier Buddhist Tantras and broader Indian religious norms. This suggests that such antinomianism—far from representing either "tribal" practices or rarified yogic codes—reflects concerns native to mainstream Indian religion.

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